A bold, clear headline encapsulates the core issue: global shipping finance is edging closer to aligning with climate goals, but the journey remains challenging and controversial. Here’s a fully rewritten version that preserves all key information while expanding with accessible explanations and practical context.
Copenhagen, December 15, 2025 — The Poseidon Principles, a pioneering, ship-finance transparency framework, report notable progress in aligning lending portfolios with the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) decarbonisation aims. Average scores against the minimum decarbonisation trajectory rose by nearly 8 percentage points, even as annual emission reduction targets became more stringent.
Signatories, now representing roughly three-quarters of global ship finance, disclosed 95% of their eligible portfolio activity in 2025, up from 93% in 2024. This continued high level of transparency marks a new milestone, reinforcing the framework’s role as a benchmark for industry-wide climate accountability.
In a press release accompanying the Sixth Annual Disclosure Report, Paul Taylor—Vice Chair of the Poseidon Principles and Global Head of Maritime Industries at Societe Generale—emphasized transparency’s central role: it helps financiers and shipowners collaborate, directing capital toward more efficient vessels and cleaner fuels. He noted that the 2025 results demonstrate tangible, real-world momentum, with signatories disclosing the majority of their portfolios and climate alignment scores approaching the IMO’s decarbonisation pathways, despite the trajectories growing stricter year by year. In his view, these gains showcase how financial transparency can actively steer the shipping sector through its transition.
The report highlights that emissions data are increasingly shaping credit decisions and spawning innovative products like sustainability-linked loans. Improvements in operational efficiency, retrofitting, and the adoption of emerging low-emission fuels are cited as key drivers behind the year’s score advancements. It’s also acknowledged that evolving methodologies and external factors—such as longer routings and supply-chain disruptions—played a role in shaping the scores. The framework therefore positions financial institutions not as bystanders but as proactive partners in the sector’s green shift.
Key 2025 findings include:
- Transparency gains: Twenty-nine signatories disclosed 90% or more of their in-scope portfolios, with nine reaching 100% reporting. This marks the highest number to achieve these targets to date, while the overall average disclosure rate stood at 95%.
- Climate alignment progress: Although averages still fall short of the IMO’s net-zero pathways, year-over-year improvements were substantial. Against the IMO’s minimum trajectory, misalignment fell from a little over 19% last year to just under 12% this year (an almost 8-point drop). Against the striving trajectory, misalignment dropped from 25% to just over 18%.
- Cargo and passenger segments show meaningful gains: In cargo, misalignment improved from 14% to 6% (a notable tightening), and in passengers from 38% to 26%. These shifts reflect better vessel efficiency, greater use of low-emission fuels, and the introduction of more efficient dual-fuel ships.
The IMO’s 2023 GHG Strategy raises the bar each year, making full alignment increasingly difficult as timelines tighten. While year-on-year improvements are encouraging, reaching 2030, 2040, and 2050 milestones still requires sustained and expanded efforts.
As part of cementing Poseidon’s place as a globally recognized standard, its methodology has been accepted as a valid approach for setting near-term and long-term portfolio alignment targets within the Science Based Targets initiative’s Financial Institutions Net-Zero Standard.
Associate membership expansion aims to broaden the framework’s reach. Since 2019, Poseidon has evolved into a widely adopted climate-reporting benchmark across industries. Now, the initiative plans to welcome a wider array of financial institutions as associate members—beyond lenders, lessors, and guarantors—to include private equity firms, hedge funds, and capital markets underwriters. This broadened participation will expand the framework’s influence across the maritime finance ecosystem, while maintaining a staged approach that avoids immediate reporting burdens for new participants.
Michael Parker (Citi’s Global Shipping & Logistics Chairman and Poseidon Principles Chair) underscored the report’s value: it provides a real-time pulse check on how lending portfolios align with IMO ambitions and quantifies industry progress across roughly 75% of global ship finance. He argued that opening Associate Membership to capital providers for the maritime sector—such as private equity and hedge funds—will deepen climate considerations in financing decisions, strengthening transparency and accountability across the finance sector and advancing a more sustainable shipping future.
The latest disclosure underscores the pivotal role finance plays in steering the shipping industry toward a zero-emission future and reaffirms that transparency is essential to measuring and driving progress.
Media contact: Nicole Schlichting, Interim Senior Communications Manager – PR & Media; M: +45 31 26 19 25; E: nsc@globalmaritimeforum.org
About Poseidon Principles for Financial Institutions: This framework measures and reports the alignment of financial institutions’ shipping portfolios with climate goals, aligning finance with the IMO’s decarbonisation ambitions. The IMO’s revised strategy commits to net-zero GHG emissions from international shipping by around 2050, with near-term targets and lifecycle emissions considerations for fuels. The Poseidon Principles, together with related initiatives like the Sea Cargo Charter and the Poseidon Principles for Marine Insurance, aim to foster transparency and accelerate emissions reductions across the maritime value chain.
The Global Maritime Forum, established in 2017 and based in Copenhagen, drives industry collaboration to promote sustainable long-term growth in global seaborne trade. The forum is funded through grants and partner contributions and operates independently of any single technology or company.
